How to Organize Scrapbook Supplies on a Budget

Scrapbooking can require some costly supplies, and keeping them all organized can add even more expense. This article suggests alternatives to expensive, custom storage solutions. Your scrapbooking area can be organized without costing an arm, a leg or your sanity.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Pizza, Pails and Pegboard

1. Organizing your paper is essential for an easy to use scrapping space. Collecting a large variety of special papers is part of what makes scrapbooking enjoyable, but storing them neatly can be a challenge. Unused pizza boxes are one possible solution. Ask your favorite pizza place if you can have several large, unused boxes. They will frequently give them to you, or charge a nominal amount. (You may want to ask several restaurants for a half-dozen or so each.) You can spray paint or decorate the boxes to reflect the contents. Paint a box red, for example, for all of your reds, pinks, burgundies and other similar shades. These boxes work well for full sheets, scraps, patterned or solid papers. You can also use them for extra page protectors, sheets of stencils or stickers, pages in process or anything else that needs to be kept flat and unwrinkled.

2. Once the paper has been contained, you can start finding containers for some of scrapbboking's other accoutrements. Small metal or plastic pails, with or without lids, work well for a variety of supplies and can be found cheaply in many places. Check your local dollar store or Target's dollar aisle--they frequently have small decorative pails, often with seasonal or other themes. You can also re-purpose soup cans, mismatched coffee mugs or plastic drink mix containers. You can use the containers as is, paint them, or cover them in coordinating fabric or paper to give them a unified look. Anything relatively short and cylindrical can work well for pens, decorative scissors, glue sticks, X-acto knives and other tools.

3. Pegboard is an excellent tool for an organized scrapping space. If you have a contractor's reshop store, like Habitat for Humanity's Re-store, in your area, you can frequently find smaller scraps of pegboard very inexpensively. You can also try your local home improvement store for their leftover pegboard scraps. Even if you end up with several smaller pieces, pegboard can be painted to give it a clean, new look. You may even want to mount several smaller pieces in different places in your scrapping space. In addition to using simple pegs for your larger tools, such as rulers, larger scissors and eyelet setters, you can hang your containers from step 2 on the wall as well, either from their handles or from a hole punched near the top of the lip.

4. Commercial photo boxes work well for holding not only photos, but punches, rubber stamps, ink pads and other scrapbooking miscellany. They can add up to a lot of money, though. Shoe boxes are a great alternative and can usually be found cheaply or for free. These, too, can be customized with paint, leftover paper or fabric to coordinate with the rest of your scrapping space. Save your own shoe boxes, of course, but also consider asking neighbors, friends and even your local shoe store for their extras as well.

Tips & Warnings

• If you use leftover paper to cover boxes or containers, you may wish to add a coat of clear polyurethane or even contact paper to give your container extra protection.
• Make sure that anything that comes into contact with your photos, paper or other memorabilia is acid free. The acids inherent in some glues, paints or uncoated papers can damage photos. Your local scrapbooking or hobby store carries a spray-on product that can neutralize the acid in unsafe materials such as newsprint and some cardboards.